What Dean Hall thinks about DayZ Origins, an ArmA 2 mod he didn't make
Turns out he had his own plans for something called DayZ Origins.
What can you do while waiting for DayZ Standalone? Chew on someone's face while spangled on bath salts, or try a new ArmA 2 mod called DayZ Origins?
It has nothing to do with Dean Hall but it has everything to do with DayZ. It's a version of the mod based on how the infection turned nearly everyone in DayZ into zombies.
The answer seems to be Patient Zero: a "super zombie", to quote DayZ Origins' website, that you can hunt and kill and find a cure from - presuming you can find and actually kill him.
DayZ Origins also features an island where the elite rich people of the world have cordoned themselves off behind closed doors and fortress-thick guarded by mercenaries with bigger and better guns than yours. But it's not impossible to get in.
DayZ Origins also has a persistent levelling system, survivor-made vehicles and lots of new types of buildings to go into and explore.
It's made by GamersPlatoon, which describes itself as a non-profit collection of gamers. And it seems to have good intentions; in bold lettering in a prominent position on the DayZ Origins website is printed this:
"We would like to take this opportunity to extend [our] sincere appreciation to developers like Dean "Rocket" Hall and Bohemia Interactive for creating such an outstanding and powerful engine of ArmA and offering the proper modifications tools for the community use.
"We defiantly looking forward to ArmA 3 and the community [is] really impatiently waiting for DayZ Standalone."
The DayZ Reddit community has tried Origins and isn't overwhelmingly impressed.
What does Dean Hall think? Remember how angry he was at The War Z for being wrongly mistaken by people for his game DayZ.
Turns out Hall is quite complimentary. Speaking to me this afternoon, Dean Hall said: "The most personally satisfying part of making DayZ has been seeing the cottage industry crop up around it, and watching all this user created content pop up."
He said "there are some awesome, awesome ideas in the Origins mod, as well as in other mods like 2017".
"You can't encourage creativity on one hand and beat it with a stick with another."
Dean Hall
"It would seem a shame to destroy that kind of creativity by me getting upset about the name," he added. "So my thoughts for the moment are really, 'Wow, that's cool,' and then, 'Aww shucks, there go my DayZ: Origins plans!'"
Hall elaborated and described the DayZ Origins naming as "somewhat unfortunate".
"Regardless of any trademark issues (DayZ is a trademark of Bohemia Interactive - I don't enjoy nor get involved in all the legal stuff), from my personal perspective I had some plans that involved the use of DayZ Origins as a name," he revealed. "And now, if I were to do what I was planning, then it would forever get confused with that [the DayZ Origins in this story]."
That's "a bit of a shame", he acknowledged, and the "general DayZ confusion factor is a bit problematic".
"But you can't encourage creativity on one hand and beat it with a stick with another."
Meanwhile, DayZ Standalone shuffles like an old-school zombie closer to a release. Dean Hall is finally happy with things, thankfully, but he's no closer to naming a date. Closed testing is under way, however, and getting external testers involved is one of the highest priority tasks.
